


a mother's love

by rangerhitomi



Category: Cardfight!! Vanguard
Genre: Family Bonding, Found Family, Gen, M/M, Mother's POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-01 14:40:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16767124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rangerhitomi/pseuds/rangerhitomi
Summary: As Aichi and Kai become closer, Shizuka longs to get to know the boy her son was definitely not-maybe-kind of in love with.





	a mother's love

When Aichi is late coming home from school one day, Shizuka is sure something has happened to him. 

He always comes home at the same time, without fail; he has no friends -- this thought always hurts -- and he isn’t part of any clubs because he’s too timid to join any. In elementary school, he came home late all the time, never offering a reason until Shizuka discovered he had been mercilessly bullied by the other children for his strong academics and his inability to communicate with his peers. 

She’s worried it has happened again.

The sky is turning orange when the door opens and he announces that he’s home; it’s not a mumble, as it usually is, but a clear “I’m home” followed by the usual sounds of him heading up to his room. 

Shizuka peeks her head around the corner, fully expecting to see him on the verge of tears, as he almost always is…

...and instead spotting a smile on his red-tinged face.

“What’s with him?” Emi has her hands on her hips, frowning at the stairs where Aichi had retreated to his room. 

He’s never smiled like that after coming home late from school, not since…

A memory flashes, of Aichi bruised and scraped up, yet with a card in his hands, a trading card for a game Shizuka had never heard of, but no explanation. He never spoke back then, the doctor explaining his mutism as a defense against the trauma she had failed to notice for so long. He sat in his room as he did his homework, the card next to him, and he had smiled. 

“A girlfriend?” Shizuka suggests, and Emi snorts. 

Later that night, Shizuka would go to get Aichi for dinner and find him holding that card, just as he did back then, still smiling.

* * *

It isn't a girlfriend. It's a boy named Kai, and Aichi talks about him all through dinner.

The mystery of the trading card Aichi has held onto since grade school is solved -- Blaster Blade, a card from a game called Vanguard, given to him by a younger Kai several years ago. Kai, who had moved away and come back to begin his first year at the local public high school, had encountered Aichi by chance at a card shop and taught Aichi to play Vanguard.

Aichi gives no explanation for how he ended up at the shop, which was not on his way home from school, but Shizuka pays it little mind. It’s the first time she could ever remember Aichi say more than three sentences during a meal.

* * *

Days pass, then weeks. Aichi is out every day, at that card shop, and every day he comes home smiling.

“I got a couple new cards today,” he says during dinner. “Kai-kun fought me and I learned a lot.”

The first time Aichi had said “Kai-kun and I fought” Shizuka thought they had a falling out, or that Kai had hurt Aichi somehow, and she was on the verge of demanding Kai’s parents’ phone number so she could give them a piece of her mind. But fighting in Vanguard, she learns, is what they call playing it. Vanguard fighters conducted Vanguard fights. 

“You talk about Kai-kun a lot,” she comments. An image of him has formed in her mind: a tall, handsome boy with warm eyes and a sincere smile. The fact that this image exists at all is due to how fondly Aichi speaks of him, since she has never seen him in person. “When do I get to meet him?”

Soup spills from Aichi’s spoon. 

“He’s kind of cold,” Emi says, dabbing at the mess on the table in front of Aichi with her napkin. “A bit scary, too.”

“He’s not!” Aichi insists, holding up his hands. “He just… he’s very serious, but he’s a good person.”

Shizuka isn’t sure which version of Kai is more accurate. Maybe he’s a combination of all those traits - serious, distant, reserved. Like Aichi, in some ways. “You should invite him to dinner sometime.”

Aichi stutters through five different excuses as to why Kai wouldn’t want to come over, none of them convincing, and even begs her to come to the card shop sometime to meet him, and his other friends, instead. Emi sips her water through the whole ordeal, eyebrow lifted.

But Shizuka puts her foot down, and in the end, Aichi agrees to invite Kai over soon. 

* * *

Every evening for weeks, Aichi stammers out some excuse or another about how he hadn’t yet asked Kai over; Emi won’t do it either, despite going to the card shop with her brother a couple of times a week, explaining to Shizuka that it was simply something Aichi had to do on his own. 

It doesn’t make sense to Shizuka, and Aichi won’t give her Kai’s parents’ number either, so she can’t just do it herself. She has half a mind to go to the shop one afternoon and ask Kai on Aichi’s behalf, since it’s become clear Aichi is too nervous to ask his friend if he wants to come hang out at his house.

There’s a tournament, and Aichi is part of a team with Kai, and they leave the city to attend. It’s on television, as it’s some kind of national championship, and Shizuka finally sees Kai Toshiki with her own eyes.

As it turns out, she was right about Kai being a tall, handsome boy.

He’s taller than Aichi by several inches, with disheveled brown hair and laser-focused green eyes, the kind of boy she would have had a crush on in high school. He speaks with a brash kind of quiet self-confidence, and judging by the commentators’ play-by-plays of the fight, he is ruthless and very, very skilled. 

He seems the complete opposite of her son, but this only makes her want to meet him more.

* * *

It isn't until a year later, after mysterious disappearances and bizarre swarms of aggressive gangs of blank-eyed high school students wreak havoc on the city and everything turns back to normal with impossible speed, that Shizuka finally  _ meets  _ Kai Toshiki. 

The self-assurance and calm coolness he had displayed at the tournament is gone, replaced by the same kind of nervous energy Aichi displays in unfamiliar situations; as Aichi lets him into the house with an excited flourish, he toes his way out of his shoes and waits for Aichi to invite him to sit next to him on the sofa in the living room while Shizuka brings out a tray of tea and some light cookies. 

“I’m so glad to finally meet you, Kai-kun,” she says, sitting on her chair across from Emi. “Aichi talks about you often.” An understatement; some nights, Kai is the  _ only  _ thing Aichi talks about.

His eyes flicker toward Aichi, who has busied himself with stirring sugar in his tea, and back to his hands folded on his lap. “Oh.”

There’s a long silence, broken only by the gentle  _ clink, clink  _ of Aichi’s spoon against his teacup. Kai reaches for his own cup but adds no sugar of his own before sipping at it. 

He’s shy, Shizuka realizes, which throws off the entire image of him being a popular, confident young man that Aichi had perpetuated. He’s not shy like Aichi, who is flustered easily and demure, but he’s clearly reserved. 

Simple yes or no questions work well with Aichi, so Shizuka gives it a try, even though she knows the answer already. “Kai-kun, you don’t go to the same school as Aichi, do you?” 

Kai sips at his tea again and shakes his head. “No… I attend Hitsue.”

“Do you like it there?”

“It’s fine.”

Silence stretches. Aichi’s leg bounces. Kai takes a huge gulp of tea that’s very hot and somehow maintains a completely impassive expression despite it definitely burning his tongue. 

Having Kai over is like having two Aichis, Shizuka decides.

“Kai-san,” Emi says, the sudden noise eliciting a slight jump from Kai, “would you like to fight with me?”

This simple request changes the entire atmosphere of the room. Kai’s shoulders relax as he nods once. “Sure.”

Emi has her deck downstairs; Shizuka suspects that she kept it handy just for a situation like this one. She does, after all, know what kind of person Kai is from hanging out with him and Aichi at their card shop, and this must be what Emi decided would help Kai become more comfortable at the Sendou household.

Shizuka switches seats with Kai so he’s facing across the coffee table from Emi and shuffles her deck as she does his. 

“Stand up-”

“-the-”

“-Vanguard!”

As Emi flips her first card, Aichi makes a sound of surprise. “Prism Smile, huh? You’re not playing Riviere?”

“I’m trying some new cards out,” Emi explains. “Misaki-san asked if I wanted to test out some of the new Bermuda Triangle cards and I really like them so far!”

“It’s a good archetype,” Kai says, looking through his own cards. “Balanced.”

“And cute!” Emi pipes up, and Kai smiles faintly.

Shizuka doesn’t understand much of anything, other than that Kai’s deck seems to be entirely scary dragons and Emi’s is cute mermaids, though Aichi does try to explain things like  _ Emi pulled a double critical, so Kai is going to take three damage in one attack  _ and  _ Kai just cleared all Emi’s rear guards in one turn _ . 

No, even though she doesn’t understand anything about Vanguard, she does know that Kai and Emi are having fun and Aichi is smiling.

More precisely, he’s smiling at Kai.

Kai wins the first game, though narrowly, and Kai compliments her play. Emi and Aichi play next, with Kai sitting next to Shizuka. This time, though subtle, it’s Kai smiling at Aichi.

“No mercy, huh?” Emi says, flipping over her sixth damage.

Aichi laughs. “Of course not. You would be mad if you thought I was going easy on you.”

“You would be right.” Emi collects her deck and stands. “Kai-san, would you like to fight Aichi?”

The question isn’t all the way out of her mouth before Kai is on his feet, deck in hand. 

“These two always have a good fight,” Emi whispers to Shizuka while the boys shuffle their decks. 

There’s a completely different atmosphere from the instant they flip their first Vanguards.

Each play is exactly matched by the other, card for card, attack for attack, guard for guard. The two fight with an intensity Shizuka has never felt before; they have, somehow,  _ become  _ their Vanguards, clashing as though there was no one else in the world, as though they are no longer present on Earth at all.

Their smiles are no longer shy, their bodies no longer tense with nervous energy. The pure, raw power between the two is almost  _ tangible,  _ like nothing Shizuka has ever felt. The determined look in Aichi’s eyes is one she’s never seen before.

She doesn’t understand how a card game can elicit these emotions.

Aichi ekes out a win, and Kai smiles through his sigh. “You’re as strong as ever, Aichi.”

“So are you, Kai-kun.” 

The humming, electric energy in the air starts to fade as they come down from the thrill of their fight, their determined expressions softening. Aichi’s smile is softening again; he collects his cards without looking at Kai, pink in his face. Across from him, Kai is the same.

Shizuka is so focused on them that she forgets about making dinner until Emi is elbowing her. 

Dinner is curry, a simple meal that’s nearly impossible to dislike. Kai finishes first, commenting on the hint of honey that she had added, and politely refuses seconds, insisting that he needed to return home to do some schoolwork. If it weren’t a school night, Shizuka would insist he stay over; she has a feeling he would turn her down regardless. When he excuses himself, Aichi jumps up and follows him to the front door. Shizuka can barely make out the conversation.

“I can walk you to the bus stop.”

“That’s okay, I…”

There’s some quiet chatter and a lengthy silence.

Finally, the door opens. 

“...tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I have…”

Some more quiet chatter, a  _ goodbye, Kai-kun  _ and a  _ goodnight, Aichi _ and the door closes.

Shizuka busies herself collecting dishes from the table so Aichi doesn’t suspect she had been trying to eavesdrop on them, and Emi lifts her eyebrows. Aichi returns to his seat at the table to finish his dinner, and when Shizuka turns around, his face is pink again. 

“I’m glad I finally got to meet Kai-kun,” she says, spooning some of the leftover curry into a container. “He’s a nice boy.”

“Mm.” Aichi picks at the small pile of rice on his plate. 

“I’d love for him to visit again, the three of you clearly had a lot of fun.”

“Yeah.” Aichi smiles, but it’s missing something. “He was happy.”

Emi swallows her mouthful of curry and hops to her feet with her plate. “Thanks for dinner, Mom.”

“Of course, Emi. Can you get the dishes for me?”

“Sure!”

“Um… do you need any help cleaning up?” Aichi asks.

“Nope, we’ve got it!” Emi is busy at work rinsing the dishes. “Go do your homework or something.”

“Oh… okay.” 

Aichi drops off his plate and heads upstairs. Emi waits for the sound of his door closing to shake her head, a smile on her face.

(Shizuka thinks she hears Emi whisper the word  _ hopeless _ but when she asks, Emi denies it.)

* * *

Soft music drifts from Emi’s room, under the closed door; Shizuka recognizes it as the latest Ultra Rare album. Across the hall, Aichi’s room is silent. Shizuka doesn’t know why, but she feels the need to tiptoe to Aichi’s door, and when she knocks, the “come in” sounds more like a question.

“Oh, I thought you might be Emi asking for help with math again…” Aichi smiles at her as he starts to get out of his chair.

“No, no, I can sit, if that’s okay?” Shizuka gestures toward his bed. 

Aichi’s head tilts. He’s confused. “Okay?”

They sit at the same time, Aichi sideways in his chair so he can face his bed. Vanguard cards are spread out across his desk in neat stacks. He’s finished with his homework, then. That’s good; she’s about to have a difficult conversation with him and doesn’t want it to impact his ability to focus on his studies. 

Now that she’s here, every imagined conversation she’d spent the day rehearsing has gone out the window. Part of her begins to doubt that this conversation is any of her business at all; maybe this was all something that Aichi needed to sort out on his own.

They sit in silence for a minute, Aichi’s gaze flickering between his mother and his deck. He clearly wants to get back to it but is too polite to tell even his family to leave him be.

“Aichi,” she says finally, and his attention snaps back to her, “you and… it’s about…” Trying to come up with the right way to phrase it has her stammering, and she decides on just getting to the point as quickly as she can, subtlety and discretion be damned. “Are you and Kai-kun… involved?”

Several emotions cross Aichi’s face in quick succession: there’s puzzlement at first, then his eyes widen and his mouth falls open and he begins to stammer, his face turns red as a beet and he looks everywhere but at his mother as he twists his hands together in his lap. 

“M-Mom, w-w-w-what, n-no--”

She leans forward, placing her hand over his. He’s trembling; his face is so hot she is sure she could feel it radiating if she sat just a few inches closer. “I’m sorry honey, I must have had the wrong impression, the two of you just--”

He lifts one of his hands to his mouth and picks at his lips, a terrible habit he developed as a child that she thought he’d overcome. 

She gently pulls it away. “I’m sorry,” she says again, “you and Kai-kun just seem so close, I can tell you really care about each other, I guess I thought that--”

“We-we’re friends,” Aichi whispers, his free hand clenching on his pajama pants. “Friends… and rivals... “

Vanguard still makes little sense to Shizuka. Emi had explained the concept of a rival to Shizuka, and  _ someone who makes you a stronger fighter  _ doesn’t resonate with her. But the image of two people who worked to make the other a stronger person…

_ Do you want to be more?  _ she wonders. 

“He’s always welcome to come over,” she says instead. “You all had a lot of fun, you and Kai-kun and Emi. I think Emi would like it, too.”

“Mm… mmhmm. I’ll… let him know…”

She wonders what they said to each other at the front door, how they carried themselves, how they looked at one another. If there was something more to the long silence between their brief conversation and Kai leaving, or if there was nothing at all because neither knew what to say.

She stands. “All right, well, don’t stay up too late. Emi says she can’t keep being your alarm clock forever.”

“Y-yeah…”

She kisses him on top of the head and leaves him to his deckbuilding, hoping her line of questioning wouldn’t keep him awake all night.

* * *

She doesn’t see Kai again until the weekend, and even then it was an accident. 

Her bags are full of vegetables and herbs, and as she wanders the supermarket trying to remember what she forgot to put on her shopping list (she’s sure there’s something), she bumps into him weighing a bag of onions.

“Kai-kun?”

His hand freezes over the scale. 

“What a surprise to see you here!” She smiles at him. “I take it you do the grocery shopping in your family, then?”

An odd look crosses his face, a sort of grimace mixed with a few other emotions she can’t quite place. “I guess.”

“Do you cook, too?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re amazing, Kai-kun! Not many boys your age are the cooking types.” She adjusts the bags on her arms to keep the straps from cutting into her skin. “I tried to teach Aichi how to cook but he just doesn’t have the knack for it. I mean, he can cook basic foods, but nothing too fancy...”

Kai shifts on one foot and places the onions in his single bag. “Oh.”

He’s obviously getting uncomfortable; she wonders if it’s because she’s saying embarrassing things about her son and decides to change subjects. “I’d love if you came over again soon. Aichi and Emi really had a good time the other night.”

His shoulders relax. “Oh,” he says again, “that’s nice.”

There’s not a harder person to carry on a conversation with than Kai Toshiki, she decides. 

“If it’s all right with your parents, you could spend the night--”

There it is again, the odd grimace at the mention of his parents, the tense posture. A horrible thought crosses her mind. 

“Kai-kun,” she says, voice soft, “do you live with your parents?”

He glances around at the other shoppers; his feet are pointed toward the checkout line. “...no.”

“Grandparents?”

No response, this time.

_ Surely not _ , she thinks. “Do you… live by yourself?”

He shifts his bag to his other hand and shrugs. “Yeah.”

She drops her bags on the floor and throws herself at him.

It’s unbecoming a grown woman to be sobbing into a teenage boy’s shoulder, and it’s definitely a spectacle for both her and for him, but she can’t help it; this child, barely older than her own son, is living without the support of a mother and father, cooking and cleaning for himself, will graduate from high school in a year without any family in the crowd to cheer him on as he moves on. 

“M-Ms. Sendou…” 

She pulls away, wiping her eyes. What an embarrassment, crying in front of her son’s best friend--no, crying _on_ her son's best friend. “I’m sorry, Kai-kun… I just didn’t know, Aichi never… does he know?”

Kai bends down to retrieve the bags she had dropped. “We talked about it once.” He holds out the bags. “Do… you want help carrying these?”

It  _ was  _ too much food to carry home on her own, comfortably, but she didn’t want him to go out of his way to help her. “Oh no, honey... “

“I wouldn’t mind,” he says quietly.

Aichi would be thrilled, having Kai come over; they could play Vanguard in the living room and she could make something more delicious for dinner than curry - there’s some pork in the fridge that she was thinking about turning into fried rice and pork - or maybe he didn’t like pork and--

She smiles instead. “Okay, then. Thank you, Kai-kun.”

* * *

When they arrive at the Sendou home, Aichi is surprised but pleased to see Kai helping his mother carry in groceries; Kai helps prepare dinner as Shizuka chatters about embarrassing things Aichi did as a child, which has Aichi lying on the living room floor with a throw pillow over his head. She knows better than to ask the same questions of Kai that she had of Aichi, about how they looked at one another the way her late husband had once looked at her, about how Kai had given Aichi a reason to get out of bed in the morning, about how Aichi’s face lit up when he talked about Kai. But those thoughts are always at the front of her mind as Aichi yells  _ Mom, don’t tell him that  _ through the pillow on his face and Kai smiles at Aichi’s expense.

Kai is an outstanding cook; he talks at length about making different sauces for the rice, and how waiting to add a certain ingredient until the right moment gave the sauce a certain texture. It’s the most excited she’s seen him.

He comes over once a week, then twice, then he’s over every other day; he helps with the cooking and cleaning, cardfights with Emi and Aichi. (Shizuka thinks she’s even starting to understand Vanguard from watching them, a little.) Aichi helps him with homework after dinner and chides him playfully about sleeping in class. On weekends, he stays over late and barely catches the last bus home, until one weekend Shizuka insists he stay the night. He’s reluctant at first, stammering out half-concocted excuses about why he can’t return to his lonely apartment, but after quiet conversations with Aichi, he gives in. 

Aichi is upstairs, preparing his bedroom for Kai to have a place to sleep, and Kai is downstairs helping with dinner; Emi is staying the night at Mai’s house, a pre-arrangement that would leave Kai and Aichi alone throughout the night. The smell and sound of onions simmering in a creamy sauce on the stovetop fill the kitchen and Shizuka cuts thin strips of beef to fry up. 

He pauses in the middle of slicing mushrooms, staring at the cutting board and the knife in his hand as if he’d just then realized where he was. 

“Kai-kun?”

“Um…” He blinks a few times and sets down the knife. 

Shizuka places a hand on his arm. “Are you okay, Kai-kun?”

“Y-yeah…” 

She shifts the knife to the back of the cutting board, steps closer. “I’ll finish the mushrooms, you can go help Aichi--”

“I’m sorry,” he interrupts without looking at her. “For intruding.”

She frowns at him. He lifts his gaze to the ceiling, where the light glistens off the tears in his eyes.

Pointing out that a person looks upset when they are on the verge of a breakdown had never helped her, or her son, and she knows it won’t help Kai, this proud, reserved, lonely boy, this boy with no parents and no family and no one to tuck him in at night or make sure he’s eating properly or doing his homework… 

This boy, who hadn’t known the hug of a mother in many years.

She reaches up and embraces him, this boy who reminds her of her own son, lonely and sad, until they found each other, supported each other, comforted each other. This boy that Aichi admired and emulated and loved, this boy that brought happiness to Aichi’s joyless life.

“You’re not an intrusion,” she whispers into his ear, and unlike at the grocery store a few weeks before, Kai returns the hug. 

She lets him break contact first, when the sound of Aichi’s slippered footsteps on the stairs echoes into the kitchen. He’s blinked the tears away, so when Aichi arrives in the kitchen to announce that he had only one pair of pajama pants that might remotely fit Kai, Aichi hasn’t picked up on the solemn mood of thirty seconds ago. 

“I’ll take care of these,” she offers, picking up the knife that Kai had abandoned. “You two go ahead, I’ll call you down when dinner is ready.”

Aichi chatters about having a Vanguard fight, and Kai agrees instantly. Shizuka smiles as she chops up the remaining mushrooms.

* * *

By nine-thirty, she’s tired, though Kai and Aichi have sat through half a dozen Vanguard fights, with Aichi winning four and Kai only two. How they have the energy to keep going at this level is beyond her; she bids them good night and lets them know she’ll have breakfast ready by eight. They barely hear her as Kai’s drive check yields two critical triggers, and Aichi loses his third game. 

She wakes with the sun, as she usually does, and makes her way downstairs for her morning coffee and television. When she reaches the living room, she freezes.

Kai and Aichi hadn’t made it to bed; instead, they’re asleep on the sofa, Kai lying on his back in too-small pajama pants with his head on a throw pillow and Aichi half lying across Kai’s body, head on Kai’s chest, his leg tangled in Kai’s. One of Kai’s arms is holding Aichi loosely around the waist; the other hand, fingers linked with Aichi’s, rests on Kai’s chest next to Aichi’s face. 

Tears form in Shizuka’s eyes and slide down her cheek.

She tiptoes into the living room and pulls the blanket from the back of her chair. Neither boy stirs as she places it over them, gently tucks them in, and kisses both of them on the forehead. 

Imagination could tell her how exactly the two had ended up in such compromising positions on the sofa, but she doesn’t dwell on it. The very fact that Aichi had found someone who made him feel safe and comfortable, the very fact that Kai had found someone to hold when he spent his whole life struggling to find his place in the world, sets Shizuka’s heart at ease. 

**Author's Note:**

> kai needs a family and i think the sendou family needs him, too


End file.
